Priya Moorjani: Advancing the Understanding of India's Genetic Diversity

Priya Moorjani, Assistant Professor of Computational Biology and Molecular and Cell Biololgy, led a study analyzing Indian genomes - the largest and most complete to date - to help untangle these groups' complex evolutionary history.  Uncovering a 50,000-year history of genetic mixing and population bottlenecks that shaped genetic variation, health and disease in South Asia, the new analysis of Indian genomes shows an ancient admixture of genes from Neanderthals and Denisovans, and more recent mingling of genes from Iranian farmers, Central Asian steppe pastoralists and hunter-gatherers from South Asia. The analysis, led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi, India, the University of Southern California (USC) and the University of Michigan, was published in the journal Cell.